We’ve been talking a lot about Quality Assurance (QA) procedures internally recently.  We are a company that is continuously trying to improve our processes and I am amazed at the relentless process flow improvement and new procedures that Timur our CTO, and the lead managers in Kazan are always implementing.

One thing that we’ve been focused on internally lately is continuing to build a culture of quality within Flatsourcing.

A few thoughts on Quality when it comes to output (this can apply to writing code, prose, music… anything).

• Quality comes from focus, you must be in a relaxed state, concentrating completely.
• Quality comes from review. Remember in high school when you didn’t feel like reviewing your rough draft before you turned in your term paper? Well, Quality only comes when you review your work.
• Quality comes from taking pride in your work.
• Quality comes from respecting your client.

I’d like to focus in on my final point, because in a client business, it is the most important factor.

Many of our clients are pretty high profile companies, extremely professional, and experts in their fields.  We take pride in hand picking our client roster, just like they hand pick us.  Because of that diligence, we work for a wonderful group of clients, and I’m very proud of who we have the privilege of working for.

Because they are high-powered, their time is valuable, and they have hired us for our expertise and professionalism as software engineers.  We often showcase this by doing a test task for them at the start of the engagement.  They are hiring us to extend the capabilities of their company.

One of the most important things about the way we work with our clients is our contract structure, which is retainer based.  We work as if we were our clients employees, precisely so that our incentives don’t get misaligned and we aren’t at odds over change orders and other things that happen in project-based engagements.  We want to work with our clients, not against them.

Once we are engaged, it is our job to make our clients jobs easier.  We do this by producing excellent work, and eliminating headaches for them.

High Quality work is one of the biggest headache eliminators.

One of the most frustrating things to a client is to have a ticket checked back in as completed, go and look at it, and have an silly and obvious bug that makes the code not function.  Something anyone can see is not right.  This is a waste of their time to see it.  They have to check it back in and send it back for repair.  This is frustrating and a waste of their time.

We strive (and are continuing to strive) to show the highest level of respect for our clients by making sure that we have QA-ed our work, so that these bugs don’t get through to clients, waste their time, and show a lack of respect on our part.

I believe when you instill a culture of respect for your clientele producing Quality work follows naturally.  We are committed as a company to deliver to our clients on this promise.

- Chris